I manage Made by Many’s New York office. Headquartered in London, Made by Many is an innovation company that helps global brands invent new digital products that result in stronger customer relationships and new revenue streams. As Managing Partner, I work closely with major brand clients on product strategy and business development, with an emphasis on the intersection of technology and media, and technology and retail.
For the past two years, I have served as a fellow for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Foundation for Emerging Issues and prior to that spent six years building and running a data visualization agency that was twice-named to the Inc. 500 list for revenues generated under my tenure while also being hailed as the "Small Agency of the Year" by AdAge in the southeast region in 2012. I also helped launch a Knight Foundation-backed text-to-video software company in 2013.
I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago and am a partner in my family's Willamette Valley-based pinot noir vineyard.

Why Women Having a Seat at the Table is Not Enough

I agree with Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg: Women need more seats at the table. And while I appreciate the right to a seat, truthfully, not just any seat will do. Specifically, we need more seats in leadership roles at the highest levels of business, politics, technology, the media, the clergy and even controlling the world’s wealth. Right now, the gender distribution is horribly off-balance:

If this was 100 or even 50 years ago, I might at least understand these statistics. I could argue that women’s access to higher levels of education wasn’t the best, that men weren’t taking a very egalitarian approach to the household and cultural norms placed women in paraprofessional roles (think: secretary, copywriter) and were not thought of as managers, directors and leaders.

But today is 2011 and there is little excuse for there to be such paltry figures across the board. So what’s going on here? The common explanations I’ve heard over the years include:

Women don’t negotiate. As Kathryn Minshew notes at the Daily Muse: “Nearly 60% of men negotiate their first salary out of college—while only 7% of women do.” Compound this gap over time and you can see that a woman’s salary and role can easily remain below that of their more aggressive male counterparts. Books like “Women Don’t Ask” and “ Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office” document this in depth.

Women take time out of their career for their family. This often means—in the words of Sheryl Sandberg—they “leave before they leave” and start scaling back their involvement even before having their baby. Ramping back up is also a challenge.

Women don’t have as many female role models and female mentors. When you think of the innovators and entrepreneurs of our generation (and especially when you go back a few generations), you still see a male-dominated landscape. Kara Swisher underscores this as she calls out to top start-up darlings from her All Things D column: “The Men and No Women of Web 2.0 Boards (BoomTown’s Talking to You: Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare).” Mentors and role models enable women to see what is possible through their eyes, their gender and their experiences. Women who have “made it” also need to be committed to paying it forward.

While these explanations are certainly not comprehensive, they do start to scratch the surface of what we are up against. In an effort to address, overcome and annihilate these gaps, this blog will work to inspire through interviews with women who have negotiated hard, founded their own companies, taken time to be a mom, been elected, lead a congregation, earned a prominent seat at the table and everything in between. As a female founder of a technology company who focused a lot on gender, power and economics in my studies at the University of Chicago, I will also be throwing in some of my insights and experiences when warranted (and even when they are not).

In the meantime, I’d like to close on an uplifting note and share a few of the things that give me hope that there is real change and a movement afoot:

Kara Swisher promises to tackle the “Women in Tech Conundrum” this fall with Glamour Magazine

Huffington Post’s new channel “Women in Tech” brings a consistent, high-profile spotlight to the women making it happen

Women like Jolie O’Dell don’t just write the talk, they code it (and then write about it for all of us); I also love when she shares well formed opinions and statistics about women and the hard sciences

Randi Zuckerberg just announced that she is hanging her own shingle, founding the media company RtoZ

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I just wanted to say how happy I am that more articles like this are getting written and picked up by places like Forbes or HuffPo. I left my full time job at a tech company to start a website to help encourage women to embrace technology, but by doing so in a roundabout welcoming way. I talk about embracing being both geeky and girly, but empowering yourself and having fun. It’s at www.girlhack.com

To be honest, we need a turn at controlling the table. Skip trying to get a few more chairs. The boys have failed at balancing profit making with societal good, community building and environmental protection. Every messy political and business situation has been created and curated and degraded under the guidance of men. Not BAD men, but men, none the less. I’d like to see a decade where working mothers and middle aged mothers took over. You’d see Standard Oil rejected on all new leases until they cleaned up the equivalent of their mess around the house, the spill in Niger that they walked away from. You’d see child care and elder communities being built that were fueled by renewable energy. Remember that we want our kids to be smart and capable, because they will be not only choosing our nursing homes but also paying into whatever retirement plan ends up remaining after GOP evisceration. You’d see 5% of the war-making and a whole new global industry of peace making, community farming and shared research for medical and scientific research. You’d see a strong shake of the head, ‘NO’, when bankers want to privatize profit but make working people cover banking losses. You’d see space travel, because heck, we like seeing our kids push themselves. But a few chairs at the table is not enough. Women are always patted on the shoulders, marginalized. We need the table for a decade. Its only fair.

This is a pretty good article. Particularly because instead of whining about how life is unfair, you simply point out the imbalances and plan on doing something about it. However, I would like to give some advice on achieving more of a balance. Guys have the advantage in business, politics, etc, of generally being more assertive than women. That, plus the fact that we are already positioned at the top makes your job much harder. Your inspirational stories will definitely do a lot to uplift spirits, but lets be real, this isn’t the first motivational piece directed at women: I’ts not going to do much. Whoever the underdog is (whether its minorities, women, gay rights activists, whatever), they can talk about what they deserve all they want, but no one will do anything unless you take it by force. You need to come in guns blazing and f**k s**t up! You need to be sneaky, smart and strategic, and do more than gently inspire people. If you don’t shove them out the door, they’re going to get wrapped up in other aspects of their busy lives.

Marrywallace, what you write is naive, unfounded and wrong. If every messy situation is guided by men then all the good ones are too. Your plans are really great though! How is it that nobody though of any of them before? Oh yeah, they would take lots of money, resources, technologies that don’t exist, and would require tons of laws changed (something that really is not possible with our political system). I would like to tear each statement apart, but I don’t want this comment to be that long. Space travel does not just happen because you like to see your kids push themselves. Saying these things and “Its only fair” shows that you are naive, unthinking and ignorant and really are the epitome of the stereotype complaining feminist who gives women a bad name to us guys (kinda like the terrorists that give all muslims a bad name, same concept). Read http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411 and tell me women leading would make everything better.

Great piece and particularly the optimistic tone – we’ve been living with the bad news for women for a couple of thousand years. What we need is the good news going forward. I hope your readers who are looking for negotiation advice will pop over to our shop from time to time and I’ll send ours to you. That’s what we really need going forward – collaboration to close the leadership gap by the women standing at the doorway.

Brilliant, thanks! I am at one with you. I think legalisation is the answer, albeit I come to this conclusion reluctantly. In UK companies have been told get on with it, or else we’ll legislate. as a consequence companies are looking at women in a new light and asking board recruitment agencies to add them to shortlists. Of course, there may be a few ‘less than fabulous’ women on boards as a result, but so what? Not all men on boards are the creme de la creme so why should we hold women to higher standards? Sometimes I think we’ll know we have quality when women can be mediocre too :) I’ve also just interviewed Gloria Feldt for my site. Very inspirational American woman!

If you want a “seat at the table,” then be as good (if not better) than those already there. It’s that simple. To say we are woefully under-represented is not only completely wrong, but very small minded.

Women have just begun to become *publicy* involved in position of power of influence and already we are surpasing our male counterparts. They have been at a very long time while we have only just begun. What are you expecting? An immediate turn around to an all women-lead political engine, economy, and business infrastructure? The very idea is lame and unhealthy, anyway.

Also, I don’t want to be a CEO. Did it cross your mind that perhaps women don’t have “enough seats at the table” because they don’t *want* them? If I wanted to be a CEO, I wouldn’t let anything or anyone stop me. I would work harder, work smarter, and make it happen. But I prefer other things…that doesn’t make me weak or unable or a victim. I choose it.

This idea of legislating a required number of women in business leadership should be offensive to any woman. It’s patronizing and faux equality. It doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t push women to be great in that particular field and it doesn’t allow men the chance to prove their worth either. True equality is the ability to choose any direction you want without hindurance of discrimination.

Have you thought that perhaps the one focused on gender is you? Have you thought that perhaps the one with the chip on their shoulder is you?

Frankly, I don’t want a woman leader simply because she is a woman. I want a leader who is a great leader. IF that person happens to be a woman, then it’s all the sweeter to follow them.

I love the good data in this piece, but you missed the one promise of the title: *WHY* should women have more seats? I think the answer “because we don’t have very many relative to our numbers in the population” is inadequate.

Implicit in the assertion that women should have greater representation is that *women bring something different than men to the table* . . . because if men and women brought the same thing, then it shouldn’t matter who is sitting there; the results would be the same. And, indeed, many executive men with whom I talk believe that this is true, that there is no reason to increase leadership diversity (not only with respect to gender, but race as well) because in this day and age, they feel, executives are mostly the same.

But women DO bring many unique and valuable contributions to the table, (beyond the stereotypical “nurturing” or “collaborative leadership”) and that’s a lengthy discussion for a different article. The point here is that we need to start writing *those* articles and having that discussion if we are intent on making a convincing, substantive argument that women should have more seats at the table.

Thank you for the comments and feedback so far! Open discourse is key to enacting change.

@Victoria: I appreciate your acknowledgment of my “optimistic tone” and “desire for collaboration” — both of which I am aiming for and agree are an absolute necessity in order for change to occur.

@happykat: Respectfully, I disagree that I am making gender the issue. While I agree that each individual should be able to choose what role they wish to play (whether that be a CEO or stay at home parent), the reality is, that if a woman chooses to hold a position of leadership it will be a more difficult journey because of her gender. I do not believe the statistics prove that women are not “choosing” these roles; I believe that the statistics outline the more difficult journey women face because of their complex choice sets. And, historically, there have been actual barriers in place for women to ascend to higher levels of leadership. We are just now finally seeing those ceilings crumble, but we have many decades of opportunity to make up.

@tkilgore: I agree that further discussion is required, and I believe that my posts will start answering the “why” question. Please explore my interview with Cindy Gallop and Svetlana Legetic (many more to come). I’m hoping that future interview posts will further explore this topic AND find possible solutions.

@All: Again, thank you for your comments and feedback, please do keep it coming!

For further ideas about this gender debate a great author to read is Allan G Johnson. He has written ‘The Gender Knot’ and for an insight on how being seen to be in control is more acceptable for men than for women read his book or start with his website and the essay http://www.agjohnson.us/essays/silence/

I very much agree that women’s negotiation skills are a problem. I’m not really sure where men learn them, but somewhere they have while women haven’t. I know it’s an area where I have personally struggled, and only recently have begun to realize my own worth to stand more firmly in salary negotiations, and to get myself onto a committee to address salaries, mainly because I think unless our job is as a negotiator, our negotiation skills shouldn’t determine salaries above our job-related skills and accomplishments. That’s unlikely to change any time soon, so I think we need to teach women the art of negotiation in the meantime.

On the point of women taking time off for family, I must respectfully disagree. I see plenty of men who advance the same as always in spite of all the time they take off to do “kid stuff.” Meanwhile, I’ve encountered just as much discrimination in advancement as other women in spite of remaining childless and unmarried. In fact, I’m the one who is expected to pick up the slack for everyone else with kids, because they perceive my schedule as more flexible than those with kids, yet think I don’t need additional compensation for it. I did finally put an end to the “but he needs to support a family” argument for unequal wages, by pointing out, “but I don’t have anyone else to share expenses and pay my mortgage if I can’t.” I think a lot of women underestimate their own worth, so don’t fight for what they deserve. Those of us who are figuring it out need to pass it on.

On the optimistic side, I do think a lot of women are making major contributions to society, they just aren’t bragging about it in spite of deserving credit.